Elder Nelson In Sweden: Fwd: Baptism on Saturday!

Hello everyone, I hope your week went well! Things are pretty good here! Firstly, we have an investigator that is going to be baptized this Saturday! He has been taught all the lessons, had his interview, and now has the service planned out for it. He really is such a stud and is awesome. It's been such a good experience to work with him and teach him about the gospel. I will let you know how the actual service goes next week.

It has officially gotten pretty cold here! The temperatures are just above 0 C (it is 2 C outside right now) and that is just around 35 degrees or so in Fahrenheit. So it's pretty chilly! And it is so strange because the sun sets so early already! We had daylight savings on Saturday, and that made it even worse. I think that the sun set at around 4:00 yesterday:( but its ok. It is strange for it to seem like it is late at night so early though.

This week we had the chance to go and do service at the temple here in Sweden. We planted flowers and worked at the grounds there for around 5 hours. And I enjoyed being around the temple so much! It felt good to be on the temple grounds and to help make it a more beautiful place. It was pretty cold that day, but it was still a blessing to be able to go out and help make it look awesome! (I'll attach a picture I took of it).

This week I got to go on splits, and it was exciting because it was my first time. A split is where you trade companions with another missionary from another companionship for 24 hours. And what made it even more exciting (scary, actually) was that I was put with another new missionary. They had only been out for around 8 weeks. So with the two of us combined we had about 11 weeks of living in Sweden, which means our Swedish was pretty horrible! But it turned out to be really fun! We couldn't understand a lot, but we did our best to talk to people! We also had two lessons to teach, so that was interesting also! We did our best and things turned out pretty well, and I was able to learn a lot that day.

I also had the opportunity to give a talk in church on Sunday, and that was an experience! I had the whole thing written out but I was still pretty worried about it. I don't really like to give talks in English, so having to give one in Swedish did not make it any easier! I gave kind of a simple talk about the role of the Savior in our Heavenly Father's plan for us to return to Him. I felt really good about it before I gave it, but I did get really nervous. I stumbled my way through it though! It wasn't super understandable, but I think I was (sorta) able to get my message across. People in the ward told me I did a good job for being here only 3 weeks, but I think they were just being nice. But it's ok because I got through it, and I was grateful for the opportunity to share my testimony of the Savior.

That's about all for me this week! I hope that you all had a good week and that things will go well for you this next week too!

Vi ses,
Äldste Nelson